Paul Krugman, For The Love Of God, Get Over Yourself

How did tenacious Hillary Clinton supporter and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman congratulate Barack Obama's nomination? He didn't! "Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America," Krugman opens today's column. "With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. Mr. Obama is an impressive speaker who has run a brilliant campaign — but if he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed." Uh oh! It seems we're dealing with a douchebag here.

Oh... oh my:

Let me add one more hypothesis: although everyone makes fun of political correctness, I’d argue that decades of pressure on public figures and the media have helped drive both overt and strongly implied racism out of our national discourse. For example, I don’t think a politician today could get away with running the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad.

Unfortunately, the campaign against misogyny hasn’t been equally successful.

By the way, it was during the heyday of the baby boom generation that crude racism became unacceptable. Mr. Obama, who has been dismissive of the boomers’ “psychodrama,” might want to give the generation that brought about this change, fought for civil rights and protested the Vietnam War a bit more credit.

Anyway, none of this guarantees an Obama victory in November. Racial division has lost much of its sting, but not all: you can be sure that we’ll be hearing a lot more about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and all that. Moreover, despite Hillary Clinton’s gracious, eloquent concession speech, some of her supporters may yet refuse to support the Democratic nominee.

Another fundamental trait of the baby boom generation: self-obsession.

 It’s a Different Country [NYT]